Not all habitable planets are equally ‘habitable’

So far we know many potentially habitable planets
around other stars out of nearly 2,000 planets that have been detected and confirmed. We expect to
find many more in the following decades. Unfortunately, we are very far from
really understanding the potential for life of these planets since we know very
little of them.

We have a rough idea or their size and temperature and that
tells us how likely they are to support liquid water, a necessity for life as
we know it. However, we also need to understand their atmosphere, water
content, climate, and many other factors that are still out of reach of our observational
technology, these planets are very far away.

A habitable planet does not mean that it is actually
inhabited, only that it might support life, at least microbial life. It might
be hard to imagine a planet able to support life yet not inhabited, but that is
another possibility. Some might be better than others since their habitability
depends on complex physical and chemical interactions. If the planets already have
life, well, that is another complication illustrated in the movie HOME.